Elena Poniatowska - Leonora

Lisbon is one vast crowd they could disappear into it if they wished; but Max wants them to see him. Leonora, with her pale face and black hair, is his trophy: he won her like the blind swimmer, and is now about to recover her, before they set out across the Atlantic.

At noon, they eat together with the rest of the group, in an orgy of sardines and port, and Leonora is scared by what she hears. If she was supposed to have once been insane, her new friends appear to be revolving at a hundred and eighty kilometres an hour around a planet whose core is Max. Peggy recounts how Max grows jealous if she buys herself a dress, because he immediately wants to wear it. In Marseilles she had bought herself a suede jacket, upon which Max at once bought himself an identical one.

‘The shop owner was surprised and insisted it was designed for a woman, but then he agreed to cut a new piece of suede to Max’s measurements.’

It was impossible for her to take her eyes off Max, for his look was that of an eagle, and his nose like that of a silver beak.

‘Do you know, Leonora,’ Peggy says, ‘Max gave me his books, and among them was one with a dedication to you that reads like this: “For Leonora, royal, beautiful and nude.” I read The Oval Lady and Pigeon Fly. Utterly enchanting! I finished reading them in the train.’

If Leonora registers her words, she mentally erases them at once.

Peggy relates how she spent a whole night in the train with Max: ‘How old he looks when he’s asleep, don’t you think so, darling?’

On seeing Leonora’s expression, Peggy changes her tune and tells her how she still wants to rescue Victor Brauner, the artist who lost an eye. Brauner was refused a visa because the quota of Romanians admitted into the United States was already filled. Leonora looks at Max, who keeps quiet.

Max’s visa to the United States has expired, and getting it renewed entails spending days waiting outside the US Embassy. ‘Help! Help! Help!’ Peggy waves her passport about her head and the officials clear a way for her. All powerful, she even manages to make fun of the police; not only is she an heiress, she is also the saviour of her present and future husbands. Djuna Barnes is still awaiting her passage in Paris.

Obtaining a visa is sheer hell, involving as it does assembling together a birth certificate, exit orders, permis de séjour , and some friends have nothing more to their names than an expired passport. Oh, the bureaucracy of it all! The friends eat seafood at the Leão d’Ouro to forget about it, where they run into Max and the English-woman, who hardly bothers even to greet Peggy.

A small fat blockage in her chest cavity obliges Leonora to be admitted to hospital for an operation.

Reclining on a white pillow, her black hair covers her shoulders and her alabaster arms give her a translucent aspect. The other patients, aware of her beauty, lean across to look at her. ‘She is a painting.’ ‘Her mouth is so very red.’ ‘Her eyes are blazing.’ Even Peggy is impressed. Those enormous dark eyes below Leonora’s thick eyebrows observe her with suspicion. The perfection of her nose, fine and slender, is arresting. She is so beautiful that Peggy turns on her heels and returns to her place at the hotel bar.

‘Bring me a double whisky,’ she orders the barman. ‘On second thoughts, better to leave me the bottle.’

Max spends the whole day at Leonora’s side and only bids her farewell when the Mexican arrives. Marcel Duchamp, Herbert Read and Laurence Vail visit her in the clinic. They all agree that Leonora is an apparition. ‘Max won’t let go of her for a moment. He is crazy about her, only now do I realise how much he loves her. I never thought he was capable of loving with such intensity,’ Herbert Read observes.

‘Does it hurt?’ Max keeps asking her, every minute.

Leonora’s hand has faded and blends into the white sheets.

‘Might you have a fever? It seems to me that you look flushed.’

Leonora indicates No with her hands, then places them palms upwards, and Max kisses them. She remains impassive, she could so easily run her fingers through his white hair, she could so easily stroke his blue fish’s eyes; but she doesn’t. In Max’s face the suffering deepens. ‘That is how I suffered in the Villa Covadonga.’ She stays silent, since nothing now happening to her even comes close to anything that went on in the Villa Covadonga. She smoothes her sheet, and the sensation of well-being is new, rising from the tips of her toes to the crown of her head. How easy to sleep when you feel protected! There in the Villa Covadonga she would awaken on the edge of the abyss and with the smell of urine all around her; here the bed is white and clean as the host at Mass, or a handkerchief, or a cloud.

‘I am the Immaculate Conception, kiss my feet.’

Max kisses them.

Leonora is captivated by herself. ‘Everyone else loves me and so I love myself, utterly and madly.’

Max and she read and draw together in perfect harmony, with no need to speak to each other. The days run on over them like water. Kay Boyle swears that Max is a different man when he’s with Leonora. Whenever she is absent, he seems miserable and nervous and everything irritates him. ‘He’s crazy about her, ab-solu-te-ly crazy.’ Kay, finding herself in the same clinic due to sinusitis problems, visits her room every morning and the two grow closer.

‘What are you finally going to do?’ Kay asks. ‘Will you go back to Max?’

‘I don’t know … I don’t think I can do that to my husband.’

‘The Mexican?’

‘Yes. He has treated me very well.’

‘Max too.’

‘Max less so.’

‘See here, Leonora, you give the impression that you are waiting for someone to hypnotise you, you’re like a medium in a trance.’

‘I don’t know what to do.’

‘Are you already married? Do you already have your marriage certificate?’

‘Yes.’

‘Do you really like him?’

‘Yes, he is a good person.’

‘That’s not important. Do you like him as a man?’

‘Yes.’

‘Then stop carrying on as if you were waiting for a sign from on high, because what’s going to hit you is a bolt of lightning.’

Kay persuades her to stay with the Mexican.

Max despises Renato. Sometimes, force of circumstances obliges them to keep each other’s company, and Leonora always has a bad time of it. Renato is well aware of his rights, and she follows him upstairs. ‘Goodnight, Max, sleep well.’

‘If you live with Max,’ Kay insists, ‘he will end up using you. The sole form of cohabitation Max accepts is that of servitude.’

‘You did me down!’ Max blames Kay. ‘I thought you were my friend and you betrayed me.’

‘Of all people you have the least right to use the word betrayal,’ Kay defends herself.

When Leonora is discharged from hospital, the group welcomes her back with open arms.

‘I don’t understand how such a beautiful woman can dress so badly,’ Peggy comments. ‘Surely looking a mess must be connected to her madness.’

‘Peggy, don’t be cruel,’ Kay intervenes angrily. ‘A month or two ago she was in an asylum, and right now she’s only just come out of hospital.’

‘Perhaps you could propose to her that she writes about her adventures while she was in there.’

‘She surely will. It must have been a terrifying experience. The Mexican helped her out of it and still continues to look after her.’

‘Then it’s a good thing he does take charge of her, because Max abandoned his first wife, sent the second one to the devil, and doesn’t even bother to look after his only son.’

‘The Mexican gives her some stability …’